from the unintended-effects dept

A month ago, we wrote about Kim Dotcom's plans to form his own political party in New Zealand. But that's not the only way that Dotcom is going on the attack against the system. Here's Vikram Kumar, the Chief Executive of Dotcom's "privacy company" Mega, on another bold move:

Mega chief executive Vikram Kumar told ZDNet that the company was being asked to deliver secure email and voice services. In the wake of the closures [of other email services like Lavabit], he expanded on his plans.

Kumar said work is in progress, building off the end-to-end encryption and contacts functionality already working for documents in Mega.

according to the site's former lawyer, Newzbin intends to make a comeback with new services designed to defeat NSA spying.

"We are horrified by the recently disclosed antics of the NSA in indiscriminately spying on all Internet users," David Harris told TorrentFreak.

"We cut our teeth protecting our users from the surveillance of corrupt US corporations like the Hollywood movie studios. We now plan to bring a range of privacy services to help protect the public from governments. Our first product is a secure email service which is about to enter closed early beta testing."

What's interesting here is the common thread with Dotcom. Both he and Newzbin's David Harris ran services that tried to resist unwanted scrutiny. That puts both of them in a good position when it comes to establishing secure email services -- at least, insofar that is possible given the limitations imposed by email's architecture. It looks like the US government's uncritical support for the copyright industry's frenzied pursuit of file-sharing sites could ultimately lead to the creation of new online services that thwart its law agencies in the far more important area of national security.

from the parallel-universes dept

Well, this one's bizarre. Back in March 2010 we wrote about the UK Usenet aggregator Newzbin being found liable for the copyright infringment of its users. A year later, the ISP BT was ordered to block access to Newzbin2, its successor. What amounted to the UK's first Internet censorship order was upheld soon afterwards.

Mr Harris, an intellectual property lawyer, used an anonymous account to post a series of insulting messages while defending a website which allowed users to download films illegally. It later transpired that Mr Harris, 52, owned the website.

During the trial he bragged online that “whoring and drinking” would begin at the end of the case and described an opposing lawyer as a “p----”.

As that notes, his interest in Newzbin was not purely professional -- he owned it:

He was forced to stand down eight days into the hearing when his link to the firm was discovered by opposing law firm Wiggins, which uncovered documents showing that all of the company’s shares were in his name.

Mr Harris, instructed on a direct access basis, originally appeared on behalf of the defendant. On 10 February 2010, after the close of evidence, the defendant sought an adjournment in order to instruct solicitors and new counsel because it had become apparent that Mr Harris had acquired shares in the defendant and because he did not feel able to represent the defendant in the light of the way the case had developed and the evidence which had emerged. For the reasons which I gave in a short judgment on that day, I allowed that application. Kirwans Solicitors and Ms Lambert were instructed shortly thereafter and the trial resumed on 2 March 2010.

Harris's anonymous comments, and the fact that he failed to reveal his direct interest in the case, had one direct consequence: he was struck off (he now describes himself as an "ex-barrister" on the Twitter account he used to post the offending comments.) But it's possible his actions had even wider ramifications.

As the quotation from the court record above indicates, halfway through the case, Harris stepped down from defending Newzbin, and was replaced by another lawyer at short notice, Ms. Lambert. This meant she had relatively little time to research the case, which probably put her at a disadvantage compared to the opposing lawyer. Had she been working on it from the beginning, perhaps the Newzbin case and UK legal history would both have taken a very different turn.

from the unintended-consequences dept

As the battle rages over SOPA and PIPA, censorship is very much on people's minds. But there are many different kinds of censorship, operating at different levels of precision. For example, while some forms are crude and inexact, like Homeland Security's shutdown of 84,000 sites, others are highly targeted, and designed to block in a very specific way.

That's the case for the attempted blocking of Newzbin2 in the UK. The judge, Justice Arnold, ordered the ISP BT to take a two-stage approach (possible thanks to the pre-existing "Cleanfeed" system it had set up to block child pornography).

If an IP address matches one of those contained in the blocking list, the request to access the site is routed to a proxy server where the exact URL – the specific address including the directory and filename – is examined. If that matches too, access is denied. The judge specified this technique, rather than simply ordering the IP address to be blocked, for an important reason, which he explained in one of his rulings:

the Studios now accept that the order should refer to IP address re-routing and not IP address blocking. It appears that IP address blocking could lead to "overblocking" of sites or pages that ought not to be blocked.

The first is that Newzbin will - and there's strong evidence they have done already, several times - change their IP address. It is well known that IP addresses have all but run out. Nearly all IP addresses allocated are recycled - they've been in use before.

Pity the website owner who picks up Newzbin's old IP address. Under Arnold, J's BT ruling the new owner of the IP address would have some solace in that the URL would not match, therefore BT customers would still be able to access the website, albeit via a proxy. Re-routing via the proxy may cause some minor problems, but that's a bit of a side issue.

In the case of Sky, [another UK ISP now blocking Newzbin2] unless Sky happen to also use a 2-stage blocking system [like BT] - and my contacts tell me they do not - then whoever picks up the old recycled IP addresses from Newzbin will find themselves blocked.

As Firth points out, one of the many worrying aspects of the Newzbin2 judgment is that there doesn't appear to be any mechanism for removing IP addresses once they have been placed on the blocking list – even if they are no longer used by Newzbin2. Adding new ones, by contrast, is explicitly permitted:

sites "whose sole or predominant purpose is to enable or facilitate access to the Newzbin[2] website" (para 10) can find themselves blocked, again without re-application to the court. If someone creates a website explaining how to work around the block, and this website did very little else but explain how to access Newzbin, it too could be blocked.

That would lead to yet more IP addresses being added to the list, which might then be handed out again to new users as they are recycled from ephemeral sites that pop up and then disappear.

What Firth's analysis shows is how even relatively "sophisticated" censorship systems that aim to minimize damage to other sites can lead to overblocking because not every situation can be foreseen or planned for. Now imagine what SOPA/PIPA will do.

The first likely step, which could be just days away, will be to ask ISPs to block some of the biggest illegal websites. It is not known yet which sites – and, therefore, which ISPs will be targeted. If ISPs do not block these sites voluntarily, the BPI will ratchet up the pressure and will seek court orders – citing 97A and the MPA case – requiring them to do so.

And this is what censorship begets: more censorship. It's especially troubling when it comes from the entertainment industry -- an industry who has a history of declaring all sorts of useful tools and services -- the player piano, the radio, cable tv, the photocopier, the vcr, the dvr, the mp3 player, online video, etc. -- as infringing, because of their own unwillingness to adapt.

from the the-way-they-want-it dept

It's kind of funny to see the entertainment industry make totally contradictory statements about cyberlockers and usenet access providers in talking about infringement. On the one hand, they complain about how it's "impossible to compete with free" because "pirates just want everything for free." But, at the same time, they whine about how cyberlockers and usenet services often charge people for access, thus making them commercial enterprises who (according to the industry) "profit from piracy." But those two things seem somewhat contradictory. If people who engage in unauthorized file sharing only want stuff for free, then why do they pay these providers to get access? And if it's impossible to compete with free, then why does it look like these services have successfully done so? Correspondingly, why doesn't the industry open up its own competitors?

All of this comes to mind as Glyn Moody points us to an "open letter" that Mark Goodge wrote to UK Culture Minister Ed Vaizey, in response to Vaizey's statement that the blocking of access to Newzbin2 wasn't a big deal, because users should simply go to services that offer "legal access to movie downloads at reasonable prices."

The reason people will pay for Usenet+Newzbin is that they want to be able to obtain movies in a format that suits them, not a format which suits the provider. They want to be able to download them and watch them whenever they want, not have to be online in order to stream them (assuming, of course, they’ve got enough bandwidth to stream movies anyway). They want a download service that gives them the same ownership and flexibility as buying DVDs. And they want to be able to obtain the movies they want to see without artificial geographic restrictions.

So, apart from the fact that it simply isn’t true that services such as Lovefilm are a suitable solution, it’s pretty clear that there’s a whole untapped market here for legitimate online purchase of movies via download. People are willing to pay, and willing to pay a fair amount -- provided that what they get in return is what they want.

At the moment, the only people making any money out of this market are those involved in infringement. As long as the movie industry maintains its outdated business practices and carries on treating its (potential) customers as the enemy, that’s how it will stay. Blocking Newzbin may result in a short-term drop in the number of people getting movies via Usenet, but it won’t lead to an increase in people getting them via legitimate means until there are suitable alternatives which provide the same level of convenience and functionality.

Contrary to popular belief, most people who “pirate” movies are not doing it for financial reasons. They’re doing it simply because nobody is offering them a product that they want to buy.

In other words, they're happy to pay... if only the industry would offer it to them in the manner that customers want. This isn't a surprise. For years, studies have pointed out that those who infringe really tend to be unserved consumers, who aren't getting the offerings in the form that they most want it. Smart companies realize that this is a form of (free) market research, and look for ways to better satisfy their customer base.

Tragically, the entertainment industry instead looks to politicians and the courts to block consumers from doing what they want, and then pretend it's for consumers' own good.

from the this-won't-end-well dept

It's been quite a week for UK copyright law, hasn't it? Today alone we've reported on UK courts deciding that they're qualified to rule on US copyright law and that merely clicking a link to open a web page can be infringement. To top it all off, the UK high court ruled that BT must block access to Usenet service provider Newzbin2. This is an incredibly questionable decision that plunges the UK into blatant government censorship. And, of course, the entertainment industry (who you would think would know better than to celebrate censorship) is thrilled beyond belief.

The ruling itself is quite troubling:

"In my judgment it follows that BT has actual knowledge of other persons using its service to infringe copyright: it knows that the users and operators of Newzbin2 infringe copyright on a large scale, and in particular infringe the copyrights of the studios in large numbers of their films and television programmes," said Justice Arnold in his ruling at the high court in London.

"[BT] knows that the users of Newzbin2 include BT subscribers, and it knows those users use its service to receive infringing copies of copyright works made available to them by Newzbin2," Arnold added.

There are many problems with this. First of all, an ISP should never be responsible for the actions of its users, and yet that's what the court is saying here. Furthermore, Usenet, which has been around for ages (and, of course, predates the web) does have non-infringing uses as well. Sure, many people do now use it to infringe, but it's pretty ridiculous to blame BT for allowing access to one service that provides access to Newzbin2, because some of its users infringe on copyrights. Furthermore, it's not even "Newzbin" that is making this content available, as the judge wrote. It's users who are making the content available.

Considering the sites that the entertainment industry has declared infringing -- including the Internet Archive, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Vibe.com and tons of blogs and forums, this is a very worrying sign indeed. Basically, if the entertainment industry is scared of your online site or service, and too clueless to figure out how to use it, you can be booted off the internet in the UK. Scary stuff.

from the good-luck-with-that dept

It appears that the MPAA's whac-a-mole game of pointlessness continues. As a whole bunch of you have been submitting, the MPAA's international arm (just chop off the last "A" in the name and you get the MPA) is asking a court in the UK to issue an injunction forcing ISP BT to block everyone's access to Newzbin. Newzbin, of course, is a Usenet aggregator, that was found liable for infringement via its service, in large part because the site's staffers actively promoted that you could use the service to infringe. This was no surprise, as courts don't look kindly on encouraging people to infringe. What then followed was a bizarre and convoluted mess, in which Newzbin reappeared -- though it's not entirely clear how or who was behind it.

So, now, the MPA has decided that it's easier to just try to block access to it. Apparently the UK already has a "Great Firewall" type of system that requires ISPs to block access to sites deemed to be child porn sites, and the MPA says that it should be simple to start censoring "pirate" sites that it doesn't like as well. Of course, if you don't see the slippery slope there, you probably missed the story about how a list of "pirate sites" to be blocked, which was put together for ad giant GroupM with help from MPAA members Viacom and Warner Bros., included such evil sites as the Internet Archive, Vimeo and SoundCloud. How long until the MPAA asks them to be blocked from the UK as well? Of course, this is what happens when "fighting piracy," rather than "helping studios adapt and make money" is your number one priority. You end up with an entire "content protection" division with multiple vice presidents... but no "here's how we adapt and make money" division. And all those "content protection" lawyers have to have something to do, so why not press for blanket censorship? It sure beats working...

from the this-is-a-good-way-to-spend-hollywood's-time? dept

I hadn't been following the story of Newzbin very closely. It was yet another Usenet indexer harassed and shut down by lawsuits from the entertainment industry. At some point, it begins to get tedious to try to follow all of the different sites that Hollywood gives free advertising to by suing, so we just skip over a bunch. However, it is amusing to find out that after Newzbin shut down (due to money issues from fighting the lawsuit), the site reappeared through a convoluted set of circumstances, involving some hackers getting into the old Newzbin system a while back and regularly copying the whole thing, a rent-back leasing arrangement with the domain (which allowed for it to be sold off), and some other random (but shadowy) parties. My guess is that the Hollywood folks aren't going to believe any of this, and will insist that Newzbin is still being operated by the same folks, but it does seem like yet another example of what a useless game of whac-a-mole the industry keeps playing. It used to be whenever they shut down one such site, another similar one would pop up. These days, it might even be the same exact site. At some point, isn't it time to realize that going after these sites isn't stopping anything?

from the ok,-move-on dept

I'd been avoiding writing about the Newzbin case, because, honestly, I didn't have much to say about it -- but people keep submitting it, so here's a very quick post. Newzbin, one of a bunch of Usenet aggregators, was found liable for copyright infringement of its users in a UK court. The ruling doesn't appear all that different from similar rulings elsewhere, with courts focusing on staff actively promoting the infringing nature of content on the site. In this case, it told site "editors" to promote works that were almost certainly infringing. Whether or not this makes sense in the larger picture, the message is clear: if you actively promote infringing activities, courts are not going to look kindly on your activities, even if the actual infringement is done by users. This trend has been clear for quite some time, and I'm still confused why any site would encourage its users to infringe these days. It's just asking for a legal beatdown.